Good resources Sean but we all know that it should be much easier than this.

I'm looking forward to the day when you say cable or satellite HDTV service will be included in MCE 2005 update in 60 days. Now that would really be exciting! -- AND it will work with the extenders.

Personally I've already made the switch to the HDTV TiVo box which now owns the televsion responsibility of my living room.

HDTV gives people a must upgrade reason which is what will sell boxes. You need to give people a powerful incentive to shell out the money for a MCE machine if you hope to do serious sales.

People are buying all of these fancy HDTV's at Costco and Best Buy and Good Guys and Circuit City... even more so at Christmas and Superbowl time. They will not be excited about shelling out the money for MCE when they discover that they can only get OTA coverage and must jump through hoops at that.

...but I'm just bitching... you already know this and have heard this before... certainly from me and I know others.... still, I'm looking forward to the day.

I hear you Tom. We all do, but it's one foot in front of the other right now and the overwhelming majority of what people want to watch in HD is on local channels. It's a step in the right direction. :)

Agreed. It is definately a step in the right direction. But to get from the 1 million or so boxes sold to date to basically early adopters to the 4 to 5 million that you guys want to get to you will need something more compeling to get people to spend the money. It's an expensive proposition and you have to give people the thing to push them over the edge. Satellite or cable.... especially cable... as it has not been effectively done yet... are one angle.

I'm afraid that upgrading to HDTV from an existing HDTV is no walk in the park that any old grandmother can take.
That's ok though. You guys should be more concerned with future sales than the 1 million or so already sold.

I'm sure that the new units sold with HDTV cards in them might be a little better. To move beyond the early adopters you will need to make it as easy to use with HDTV as the TiVo is.

Microcontent is another angle. If you can capture the "tail" as it is increasingly being referred to these days you can also give people a reason to buy a box. Everyone has something small that is important to them, Little Leage, hobbies, obscure sports, church, high school athletics, local neighborhood city council meetings, micro celebrities... the list is endless. Show people how to access this content via MCE/broadband connection and you can also unload more boxes.

You guys need to hire a team of about 20 to 30 editors/surfers to find this Microcontent on the internet, create a guide and a search tool, build the interface between the broadband content and the MCE interface and then market it correctly to the populace at large -- using very direct marketing to the various subgroups that you hope to attract as well as mass market stuff that shows the concept of broadband content in general.

Nothing would make me happier than to see 10 million units sold. I just worry that based on today's capabilities alone that we will not see it happening anytime soon. I want to see this thing succeed.